career, but in recent years, you've become one of britain's most prominent, noisiest campaigners to clean up and protect britain's waterways. and when we suggested an interview, you wanted to meet here — why here? the simple truth is this is the amwell magna fishery. i've spent the last six, seven years as chairman until the last few months, and ifind myself, and the club find ourselves six years ago now, five, six years ago, having to pick a massive fight with the very people who are charged by us, by the nation and by parliament to protect, nurture and look after these rivers and particularly this kind of river. this part of the river lea is a choke stream. there are only 225 on the entire planet. most of them were here in southern england and this one was on the verge of extinction through lack of flow, it had effectively turned into 2.5 miles of stagnant garden pond. and when you say "lack of flow", isn't thatjust nature telling us that the climate is warming, that here in the southeast of england, things are getting drier, and the river is suffering? no, not in the least, and i know the environment agency would have you believe that, but that overlooks the fact that, as we speak, these most rarest of river ecosystems on the planet, according to the environment agency, are currently being overextracted by local water companies to the tune of about 1.2 billion litres of water per day, every single day, ecologically, environmentally damaging, destroying some of the rarest ecosystems on the planet and all for someone else�*s profitability. you've already mentioned the regulators and you've already hinted that there's a problem, a systemic problem with the way the water industry works in the uk. try to sum it up for people watching and listening, notjust in the united kingdom, but around the world, because this may well apply in many countries far beyond the united kingdom. 0h, absolutely. here in england, i believe england is unique. it is the only country in the world with an absolutely 100% privatised water industry. there are any number of other models used throughout the world — some private, some public, some hybrid combinations thereof, but england, so far as i am aware, is unique on the planet in that that industry is, a, 100% privatised and, b, these are companies operating state granted monopolies for profit. now, it's not that that's a bad idea, but when you have a company operating a monopoly, you clearly need a system of regulation that is hands—on, that is proactive and is capable of delivering and ensuring not only the interests of the customer and bill payers, but the environment. here's what a former chief of the water industry sort of broad collective group, the water uk chief exec, michael roberts, said — now, he said this admittedly three, four years ago, but i'm sure the industry would say that the fundamentals still apply. he said, "when privatisation came to the uk, "water quality was poor, rivers were polluted, "our beaches were badly affected by sewerage, "and since privatisation, investment of nearly 160 billion "has seen improvement." he laughs let me put some qualifications on all of this. when water companies engine the word �*investment�*, it's not in the sense that you and i and most people think of it, that the shareholders have taken cash out of their back pockets. any money spent by the water companies has actually been funded by bill payers. now, when they come up with the figure, what they forget to mention is they've also taken out £72 billion in dividends out of those companies, that's our money, they've left these companies now sitting on £60 billion worth of debt to such an extent that one of them almost toppled a matter of weeks ago. you're talking about thames water... indeed. ..which serves, what, 15 million customers and has a debt of some £14 billion. actually, if you look at their balance sheet on thames waters, it says 14, but if you go looking through the broader group of companies, you'll come to one called kemble water financing, and i think you'll find kemble is sitting on £21.7 billion worth of debt. now, when it comes to the water quality, there are two stretches of river in england right now designated as bathing water. this morning, both of them have no swim warnings posted. in 2009, 24% of our rivers met good ecological status. that has now dropped and the current projection is by 2027, that will be down to just six, and as we speak, every single river in england fails the chemical test, every single river is polluted, and one of the biggest sources of that pollution is the water industry. so, what the lobbying organisation that uk water is, like to qualify and actually tell me that the single fact that i've just given you is wrong, and i will happily withdraw it and apologise profusely. isn't the problem here that to fix the problems you've just outlined, and there is no doubt, there is a massive problem — sewerage is flowing into rivers and onto our uk coast. we see it every single day. isn't the problem that to really solve that problem, you need to spend enormous sums of money, massive investment in water treatment plants and in new sewers, which the water companies say can only happen if they are given permission by the regulator to massively up customers�* bills. well, let me help the regulators. they may want to go and speak to their chief executives of the water companies who, two years ago, were written to by the regulator who pointed out two things. 0ne, they have a statutory obligation to build, operate and maintain sewerage systems capable, and i am quoting, "of effectively dealing with the contents of those sewers." they wrote a second time six months later telling the companies in the regulator's opinion, "we, as customers, for 30 "years, have provided all of the funding "the companies needed to meet "all of their legal obligations, including building and "operating an effective sewerage system." clearly, that's not happened... crosstalk. yeah, but nobody disputes that much better sewers are needed in london and across the country... ok, but the point... ..but we know that they cost billions of pounds to install. the point that i'm making is we have, according to the regulator — and water companies confirm this annually — we, as the public, have provided them with all of the funding that they should have been spending on the sewerage system. so, my question becomes, is — we've provided you with the funding, the regulators confirmed that, the water companies have confirmed it. what happened to the funding? where has it gone? it clearly was not spent on the sewerage system, and can we now have a refund? you seem to believe these days that renationalisation of the water industry is the answer. are you sure about that? actually, i haven't said that at all... he laughs ..as it happens. my perspective... well, forgive me, but when i think — thames water announced this massive debt, and it looked for a while as though they might, frankly, default on their debts and collapse, you said, "we shouldn't pay a penny to bail out thames water." correct. "we should, in essence, renationalise it." no, there's a qualification on that, and let me make two points. 0ne, if we nationalise those companies, we let those shareholders and those bondholders and those people who've made off with £72 billion worth of our money, instead of investing it in the sewerage system, instead of investing in making sure london is supplied with water, because london's now on the verge of running out of water for the same reason — lack of investment in infrastructure. what i said was the legislation already exists for the secretary of state to actually resolve and move this forward this afternoon with nothing more than a stroke of a pen. government in the secondary state has the power and authority to issue what's called enforcement orders, which allows government to effectively take control of those companies whilst they remain in private ownership, and government can order those companies — this is what you're going to invest in infrastructure, and this is what you're going to pay your shareholders, this is what you're going to do to pay down your debt, and this is what you're going to do to pay your chief executive. government has the power to do that this afternoon. yeah, well, therese coffey, who, as you know, is the secretary of state responsible for the environment, she says 1.6 billion has been agreed with the water companies as an immediate investment priority. she says that the uk government is raising the cap on fines for water companies that are polluting the waterways. she says she's listening to people like you... actually, she's not. all she had to do was enforce the law in the first place instead of creating new ones that will deliver little, if anything. the uk government was taken to court by the european commission in 2012, and the european court ofjustice ten years ago ruled that what was happening in the uk was in breach of the legislation, it was illegal and sewerage should only ever be dumped into the environment in exceptional situations. now, that means a rare event that is so unique, you couldn't actually foresee it and plan for it. so here's the thing — for me, what the government have done, it's a classic of bureaucratic let's create a process, let's make it look like we're getting busy and doing something whilst at the time actually delivering little, if anything. they should've just enforced the law as it stood at the time, and there's still time to do that. turn your eyes to the left, to this gorgeous stream, river behind you. the brown trout are still there, aren't they? they certainly are, and... so, perhaps you might be accused of being some sort of doomsday voice, wishing to exaggerate problem for, some might even say, political capital. well, let me try it this way. a, i'm nota member of any political party... well, you've been an advisor to the labour party in the past, and it seems to me that your message is now getting through to sir keir starmer, who has been emphasising, in recent days, your message that, in his words, "the waterways of britain are thoroughly and utterly polluted." to qualify it, i have — was appointed a regulator of the commercial radio industry by the then labour government, i was appointed chairman of the live music forum, which was commissioned and established by government, and so far as i'm aware, i've never ever acted as an advisor to the labour party, just so that we're clear where we are. i will repeat again — not a single river in england is in good overall environmental health. every single river is polluted. you're an experienced campaigner, cos foryears, you did advocacy work for the music industry, and now, you've obviously devoted so much of your time to cleaning up the waterways of britain. do you think you're cutting through? listen, how do you measure these things? on one level, i've been incredibly fortunate. i've spent all of my adult life with random people in random places all over the world walking up to me and wanting to talk to me about music. now, as a musician, what an extraordinary thing. here's the shift. over the last two or three years, people now want to talk to me about effluent in rivers, and that's beginning with that four—letter word beginning with s. yeah, i think i know the word you mean, which we can't use on the bbc. nonetheless, it's a powerful word, and what you've specifically done is — and you've done it in this interview as well — you've suggested that what we see in our rivers, all of the pollution and the problems are linked to, and it's a word you've used — corruption. you seem to believe there is something now corrupt about the water industry. well, when i say corrupt... well, let me put it this way... it's a word you use. 0h, listen, absolutely, and two reasons give me some background for that. the environment agency, as we speak are — and i believe i'm quoting them — currently engaged in the largest criminal investigation they've ever launched against all water companies, and that they now believe there may have been widespread serious non—compliance with discharge permits. that's the words of the regulator, not me. so the regulator seems to think there's some kind of corruption going on, and yesterday, it was announced that six water companies are now in the process of being taken to court over that very allegation that there was misreporting, underreporting going on. that was being used to then gain favour from the regulator, and let me remind everybody... crosstalk. we have to be careful. as you say, allegations — allegations right now... let me make the last point. it is not 12 months ago that southern water was fined 90 million quid in court, and the judge ruled that that was because they were deliberately misleading and trying to deflect the regulator away from what was going on, and the reality of their business model. that's not an allegation on my part. that was the quote judgement. he laughs. all right. i'm going to ask you now to take your mind away from this river, away from the specifics of britain's water issues, and ask you whether this passion that you're expressing with me right now, whether it runs right through your life and can be traced back to your roots in derry, londonderry as some call it, in northern ireland... yeah, it's ok. ..where, frankly, you were raised in one of the tensest spots, in the middle of northern ireland's troubles. were you a fighter from the very beginning? um...i don't think so. were my parents fighters? probably. you were named after two ira men. that's very true. suggests your mum was a fighter. that clearly suggests my mum was a fighter. my dad was chairman of the labour party in derry when there was such a thing, he was branch secretary of his local union. both my parents were deeply involved in the civil rights movement and i have vivid recollections of being ten years old and being taken on civil rights marches all over ireland, all throughout northern ireland, my family were on burntollet the day that parade was attacked, my family were there at bloody sunday, and my family were deeply engaged in trying to change a corrupt political system in northern ireland. so, here's one of the fascinating things about you. i mean, here we see it, and you have a cause and are a fighter now for that cause, but what's fascinating about you as a musician — because i want to talk is that you and your bandmates in the undertones, when you had that great success as part of the punk era of the sort of late �*70s, early �*80s, you, despite your upbringing, chose not to sing political songs. here's the thing. the undertones developed a career because of a little bar called the casbah. it was the only pub in town that would actually entertain the fact that five kids with no idea what they were doing, and we were given a bit of space on a friday night. right outside the door of the casbah was a british army checkpoint. so, simply to get in and out of that pub, you basically would have to be searched, name checked, date of birth, run through computer — all that kind of good stuff. do you really think the 50 people turning up to watch the undertones on a friday night needed us to give them a lecture about bombs, bullets and barricades? we, like every healthy... or was it that maybe you were intimidated to a certain extent? oh, no, good lord, not in the least. it wasn't that, it wasn't fear? i can absolutely assure you the last bunch of people you ever could possibly intimidate was the five members of the undertones! like every other healthy teenager on the planet, we were more obsessed with more songs about chocolate and girls. exactly. what you sang about was the usual teenage dreams, the longings, the girls, the frustrations with your family, it was. . . it was the stuff of ordinary life... correct. ..which in a funny sort of way was sort of avoiding the reality of what you were living through. well, it's not, because that was actually allowing us that moment of freedom and that head space and that moment of clarity, because the truth is nobody in northern ireland at the time sat around thinking, "oh, this is dreadful, this is terrible." everybody, as best they could, was trying to get on with normal lives. and, in fact, that situation, like all forms of poverty and oppression and difficulty and suffrage, becomes normal. and i'll give you a very simple example. the first time we as the undertones went to new york, i had spent weeks reading articles and national newspapers about the crime rate on manhattan island and the death toll that there was and the likelihood if i walked out of my hotel on 42nd street, i'd be mugged within seconds, and about half an hour in times square, my brain engaged and just went, "sharkey, ten hours ago, you were standing in the bog side. "there's nothing new york is ever going to throw you, "my friend, that will ever put you off your beat." why did you quit so young? you formed the undertones with your mates in, i think, �*75. yeah. you were out by �*83. still, hugely popular. we were, but that's — the simple truth of the matter is i then had a longing for other things and wanted to go in different directions. we were settling down. some people want to stay in derry, some people wanted to make different — particular types of records, and you're dealing with any little group of friends that effectively met when we were teenagers. i just wonder if there's something about the music business you really didn't like, cos you said afterwards, not so long after you left, you just said, "i couldn't go on making the kind of intellectual and emotional investment that they needed any more." oh, that was back towards — that was when i was getting towards my late 20s, heading towards my 30th birthday. yeah, and that was me demanding of myself that the level of investment i emotionally and intellectually wanted and needed to put into records, and i guess if fast forward 30 years, we'd now be saying — maybe i was kind of going, "you know what? "i need to take a break from this for a while, "and to get away from it." i wonder about the music business, cos you worked in the record industry for a while, then you run uk music, which was the site of the big lobby group working on behalf of musicians and venues and all of that. do you think the music business and particularly musicians are in real trouble right now? the digital age does not seem to have worked out well for musicians. listen, listen, the simple truth of the matter is you cannot single out the music industry for that kind of accusation or scrutiny. i could line up any... well, yeah, you can. why can't you ? i could line up every single industry in the country, i speak to the fleet street journalists right now, they're on the verge of a nervous breakdown every morning, it's eight o'clock in the morning, wondering what they're going to do for the byline that day. we all live in that kind of world with that kind of pressure. now... but for creators, musicians who are seeing that their music is being downloaded by possibly thousands, if not millions of users, and yet they are getting virtually no reward. that's a different thing and, clearly, my instinct and empathy are going to be towards the musicians and the songwriters and the composers and the performers. so, yes, but, by the way, that's not to say that the music industry workers are any less or more exploited than others. go and tell that to the man from amazon who's having to deliver a thousand packages a day and running up your driveway, ringing the doorbell because he's got a hand—held device demanding that he's back in his van in another 7.5 seconds. now, here's the thing, and it's where you and i are going to agree — is it moral when the likes of apple and google and tech companies and big multinational record companies are reporting lifetime changing sums of money and profit... exactly. ..and songwriters are out there not even making a minimum wage? so is there a need for the industry to reexamine and readdress? absolutely. i mean, do you think you — i mean, let's be honest, did you think you failed people like mahalia? now, mahalia is an r&b singer, she's very successful, she's been on tour with ed sheeran, she's won awards. she said just the other day, "i have racked up 12 years of debt." when she goes on tour, she ends up with a deficit. she is getting virtually nothing... i've read the blog. ..from every song that she — that her fans download... 0h, sure. i mean, there's something wrong there, and you were supposed to be working on these people's behalf. 0k. well, here's the thing — are they getting paid? that's a nice allegation to be marking. here's the thing. is there now a licensing scheme available through apple? and by the way, i didn't do those deals. have we moved from where people could access all of the history of the internet and the music industry for free, and fast forward that to there now is some sort of marketplace there? well, it does now exist, and it is there. i absolutely 100% agree, but happily applaud any and all efforts by the artists. there needs to be a rebalancing of the payment system and the means of distribution back to the artist, because right now, they're being disadvantaged, it is unfair, and that needs to be addressed, and technologies and regulators and governments are as much a part of that as the record companies and the music industry. just a final thought on that. do you think if you and your mates were looking, you know, in your late teens today, looking at forming a band, looked at the realities of brexit for musicians, which has definitely added to the bureaucracy and costs of touring in europe, look at the way the digital era works for musicians, do you think you would actually want to go into it? well, you see, you overlooked the most basic compulsive thing about why people become musicians or creators or writers or painters. they have an inherent burning desire and ambition to do it, and you're not going to do a damn thing or put an obstacle in the way that is going to stop them from doing it. one of the things that actually sets the united kingdom apart from most others on the planet is, thankfully, we have generation after generation of young people who have that desire, that passion, that drive, that lionheart, and who go on to create the most extraordinary music in the world that the rest of the world wants to embrace and listen to. final thought. you stopped performing, you left the music industry behind. now you've fully adopted clean water and these beautiful rivers as your cause. you have raised your own profile when it comes to the politics of this issue. what's next for you ? i mentioned earlier on that people used to come up and talk to me about music. i'm really happy to go back to obscurity again and go back to talking about music instead of talking about effluent and rivers. i look forward to that day enthusiastically. feargal sharkey, it's been a pleasure. thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you for the opportunity. hello. sunny spells and scattered showers. does look a bit of a mixed bag but actually not too bad. midweek an area of low pressure in the north sea that will generate showers, particularly across eastern parts of the country. elsewhere they'll be one or two showers as well. this is what it looks like around the middle of the day. you can see showers developing there, some evidence to think the weather will be closest to the western coast. temperatures on the western coast. temperatures on the modest side, we are talking about 16 in aberdeen, 18 for birmingham and most areas in the high teens may be nudging up 20 degrees in london. that's a daytime on wednesday. this is wednesday night into thursday and the weather front was off the atlantic and that is going to bring thicker cloud and a spell of more persistent rain, at least for a time it does look as though the weather should improve. the weather after thursday, he could see that moving into western parts of uk. the heaviest of the rain associated with that low and its fronts will be a bit further to the south. across wales, the southwest of england, central, southern england but notices sent good map of the day a package to that weather front that your bright not. in cardiff they'll be some sunshine. rain across northern ireland, the further north and east you are the benefit of the weather will be. towards the end of the week that area of low pressure still kind of sluggish, moving towards ees. the weather front is eventually going to pull away into the near continent and behind it. just a few showers scattered across but very light wins. temperatures decent enough this is about the average for the time of year. 19 and glascow, 21 in london. that takes us into the weekend for that believe it or not no large areas of low pressure are forecast for the weekend. quite the opposite. we are expecting an area of high pressure to build across the uk for that very light wind, generally dry and bright weather for most of whether you are is a ruler work of the channel island temperatures should recover with more sunshine, 20 in glascow and belfast. cannot find whether it will last through saturday and into sunday as this rather elongated area of high pressure develops across the uk. actually it is centred right across us during the course of sunday for the winds blowing around the area of high pressure. right in the area of high pressure. right in the middle in fact i suspect for some this means clear blue skies on a up decent temperatures at pushing 20 celsius widely across scotland and into the low 20s across a cell. is this high pressure can alaska's mac it does look as though it will it will into next week. quite a big year of high pressure stretching from the central and north atlantic across the uk and further into more eastern parts there are loads trying to push and from the south. at the moment it does look as though the outlook for next week is looking generally dry and bright with that area of high pressure. pleasant temperatures, high teens or low 20s. pretty much across the board. that's it for me. thanks for watching. welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm mariko 0i. the headlines... a private burial for the a private burialfor the leader of the wagner group. the british foreign secretary heads to beijing as secretary meets china's prime minister, can the relationship between china and the west be repaired. live from our studio in singapore, this is bbc news. it's newsday. hi there, thank you for being with us. we begin in florida — where people are bracing for the arrival of hurricane idalia. the storm — described by forecasters as extremely dangerous — is heading towards the us coastline. these are the live pictures from key west